Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does a CDN affect search rankings?
-
I feel kind of stupid asking this, but if i use one it would speed things up quite a bit. It is for a ecommerce website, any guidance on this would be awesome!
-
Google officially said the site speed is a SEO factor which, when implemented, will affect 1% of SERP results. This gives some idea of the scope of it's relevancy. (not saying 1% is either high or low, this is all very subjective)
Having said that, beyond speed improvement, CDN provides other SEO related benefits.
I've actually just published a 2-part Blog post that investigates SEO & CDN related myths and talks about CDN and SEO benefits, I hope you`ll find it useful. it should answer all questions:
Part 1: SEO & CDN Myths
Part 2: SEO & CDN benefits -
I use a CDN and have never seen any impact on my SEO. As long as your HTML is served off your domain you're fine.
If you're using AWS Cloudfront you can set up a CNAME so that your content comes from, say, images.mydomain.com instead of xyz.cdn.com. Helps obscure it from visitors and looks a bit neater.
-
Using a properly configured CDN will not have any negative effects on SEO. It can have positive effects on your rankings by offering faster page loads.
With Google's current system, you would not see a SEO benefit per se. If your current site is deemed slow by Google, you could have your current speed penalty lifted.
Moving to a CDN will surely provide a better user experience. Google is constantly adjusting it's algorithms in chase of the best user experience, so this is a chance for you to get ahead of the game. It is reasonable to think in the future Google may consider site speed as a ranking factor.
Two other suggestions regarding setting up a CDN:
-
you need to be very conscious of your cache settings. You could make a change on your site and users will not see the change if you do not ensure that change is propagated throughout your CDN
-
try to include all files which would benefit from a CDN. I have seen some sites just add their videos and image files to the CDN. Custom Javascript, CSS files and so forth can all benefit from CDN. PageSpeed and YSlow are two great tools for optimizing page loading times.
-
-
As far as I know, the urls of your additional resources such as images, css, and scripts shouldn't affect your SEO either way.
-
But, does the use of a Content Delivery Network (cdn) itself affect seo? For example my pics / code will be hosted differently. Just kind of confusing to me since I'm used to URL structure being: mydomain.com/images/pic.jpg instead of xyz.cdn.com/2523/myname/pic.jpg. Is this even something to be concerned about?
-
Site speed is only relevant when your site is extremely slow. Google doesn't penalize you unless your page load time is excessively long. You won't get a boost in rankings by speeding up your site.
With that in mind, Site load times do affect your user experience, so you may notice a lower bounce rate, more pages per visit, and possibly a higher conversion rate.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can an external firewall affect rankings?
For security reasons we are now routing traffic through an external firewall cum CDN. Our server and domain IPs remain the same, but any request is routed through an external IP, which then forwards the traffic. Would our rankings be affected because of IP changes? Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | samgold0 -
Lost ranking after domain switch
I recently migrated from https://whitefusemedia.com to https://whitefuse.com. The website URL structure and content remained the same and I followed all the best practice guidance regarding checks on the new domain and appropriate 301 redirects. I have seen traffic drop by about 50% and the traffic that is still coming through is mainly coming through links still listed by Google under the old domain (https://whitefusemedia.com). Is this normal? Should I expect to see this bounce back, or is there anything I can do now to regain the rankings?
Technical SEO | | wfm-uk0 -
Indexed, but not shown in search result
Hi all We face this problem for www.residentiebosrand.be, which is well programmed, added to Google Search Console and indexed. Web pages are shown in Google for site:www.residentiebosrand.be. Website has been online for 7 weeks, but still no search results. Could you guys look at the update below? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
Removing site subdomains from Google search
Hi everyone, I hope you are having a good week? My website has several subdomains that I had shut down some time back and pages on these subdomains are still appearing in the Google search result pages. I want all the URLs from these subdomains to stop appearing in the Google search result pages and I was hoping to see if anyone can help me with this. The subdomains are no longer under my control as I don't have web hosting for these sites (so these subdomain sites just show a default hosting server page). Because of this, I cannot verify these in search console and submit a url/site removal request to Google. In total, there are about 70 pages from these subdomains showing up in Google at the moment and I'm concerned in case these pages have any negative impacts on my SEO. Thanks for taking the time to read my post.
Technical SEO | | QuantumWeb620 -
Do Letters With Accents Affect SEO?
Hi Guys, My company has a franchise of a foreign company that uses an accent/foreign letter in its brand name. We have to refer to this franchise with this symbol on our website to meet their standards. I've done some research on this but its not conclusive, so i was wondering whether anyone here can confirm this for me; Will using the letter with this symbol impair our rankings for this franchise name? Obviously as a UK business people search for this franchise with a regular letter and not the accented one. I would have thought that Google is clever enough to recognise the meaning of the accented letter by now and therefore it wouldn't affect rankings (much). Furthermore, do you think that it would make any difference to use the HTML element to represent the accent rather than copy and pasting the symbol onto our website? I would've thought this would help Google pick it up, but it might not make a difference anyway! Any help is appreciated. Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | Sandicliffe1 -
Google truncating or altering meta title - affect rankings?
I have a site that the title tag is too long and the title is simply the name of the site (I think they get it from ODP, not sure) Anyway, the rankings for the home page have dropped quite a bit. I'm wondering if the change that Google makes affects rankings (i.e. name of site doesn't have all the keywords).
Technical SEO | | santiago230 -
Do the search engines penalise you for images being WATERMARKED?
Our site contains a library of thousands of images which we are thinking of watermarking. Does anyone know if Google penalise sites for this or is it best practice in order to protect revenues? As watermarking these images makes them less shareable (but protects revenues) i was thinking Google might then penalise us - which might affect traffic Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | KevinDunne0 -
Impact of 401s on Site Rankings
Will having 401s on a site negatively impact rankings? (e.g. 401s thrown from a social media sharing icon)
Technical SEO | | Christy-Correll0